The SoCal Years 10: Dirt and the Dirty Web

The Riveting Adventures of A Filipina-American Actor-Girl in the Southern California Jungle

The SoCal Years hubs comprise a series of narrative essays from the late 1990s, pre-9/11, immediately after grad school when, knowing she would run screaming back to the East Coast in the end, a young-ish Pinay New Yorker, armed with her new Drama MFA, decided nonetheless to dip her toes into the Hollywood swamp.

Quit Disney!! Sent the letter—was it Friday? An immense relief. Now I feel safer about having poked fun at their dress code.

A fellow web storyteller asked for more show biz industry poop. Well, let me tell you. Never in my life have I experienced what I experienced at The Disneyland Show, let me tell you.

Did I mention that before I got to grad school I had a long career as a professional actor, based in the Big Bad Apple? Well Let Me Tell You.

Never in my life have I ever signed a contract, only to discover at my first rehearsal, straight from the pouty little mouth of the vocal coach (himself a separate, equally fascinating entity), that I didn't really have a job. That they had "agreed to train THREE [Pocahontas candidates]" and would decide afterwards "who gets the slot. "

Wouldn't have been as much of a problem if someone, anyone, had said so before I turned down another offer in favor of this one and the regular paycheck I was expecting from this gig turned out to be a figment of my imagination. Rehearsal #2 was four days later, and they pay hourly for those, with a minimum of 4 hours per session. I've cleared, in five weeks, about $280 from what has been, up to now, my sole source of income.

Thank the Goddess for plastic.

Imagine this, let me tell you. The lovely and sweet (truly) stage manager tells me they plan to offer me the soon-to-be-vacated 3-day-a-week slot, and that they plan to start me at the end of the month (meaning end of September, 2-1/2 weeks later).

I'm thinking, well, they'll have to rehearse me pretty much every day so I can assimilate the blocking, the music, the spacing; learn to pace the show vocally and physically; build, grow and evolve the character of ye lovely Indian Princess from days of yore.

At this writing it's been five weeks, I've had a total of six rehearsals, some of them up to seven days apart. I have essentially been auditioning for five weeks and haven't been provided the conditions in which to be any good.

No, I don't rehearse at home, Disney's not paying me to do that. Besides, I have barely time to hold down the job I finally had to get to generate income for groceries and rent, then rush home to write my thesis. How, pray tell, does a performer learn a show well enough to go on without regular rehearsals?

I'm telling you!

No self-respecting actor submits to being auditioned for weeks on end, with no semblance of a light at the end of the tunnel, and then not be given the tools in which to do the job. I'm an idiot for hanging on so long, I'm a bleeding heart—I caved because they begged me to stay, and it's all my fault.

But it's over now—it is—I'm telling you.

• • • • • • • • • • • •

So about the "vocal coach." Wait, I have to stop giggling (mmfff hee hee...). Not a voice specialist, no—a Piano Player, my dear. Unfamiliar with the terminology (kept looking at me all blank and speechless until I caught on that he didn't know what I was talking about). Hasn't a clue about the anatomy of a singing voice.

Really wouldn't be a problem if he hadn't continued to push the line. Dangerous when you're trying to manipulate a singing voice and don't know how. Easy as pie to damage a young singer's chords, and this one scared me, then made me mad. Most "vocal coaches" who aren't any good at least acknowledge that they aren't any good and don't overstep their bounds. They aren't assh-les mostly. And yes there are, of course, exceptions.

Also, it was painfully clear that he just didn't like the sound of my voice. Well, unlike the acting and movement and persona of a performance, a voice is a voice is a voice. There's no changing it's timbre (color), its tessitura (range), its volume (...well, volume).

He unfortunately also didn't really know how to name what he wanted, so he called it a lot of other things. What he really wanted was a big huge belter. But all he could say was "you need to sound exactly like Judy Kuhn." Poca's singing voice in the film—you know.

Anyone know Judy Kuhn's work? Les Miserables, Sunset Boulevard, Chess? Highly-trained classical soprano who DID NOT belt her way through the recording of the soundtrack, no. Would be the first to assert that belting above your comfortable chest range is anathema for a singer. Ask her. Go on.

Well, anyhow, I'm not a big huge belter. If he'd understood that, he would have left me alone, and insisted that Disney release me when I asked. Instead the intimidation and frustration went on for a couple of rehearsals, and at one of them, I blew my voice out because he told me to belt. Then he turned it into a flaw in my ability—my doing, not his (because, my dear, he didn't know).

Well, it was my doing, 'cause I complied, even though I knew better.

• • • • • • • • • • • •

A couple of you are thinking, oh please, she's rationalizing—she's probably awful. Well...

...could be. ◊

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